All the Million Hours
by wallyflower
Summary: Going up to her flat, he takes the stairs two at a time. NonDH compliant. SSHG


_For all the doctors and healers I know, and the people who love them._

He took the stairs two at a time. Hermione Granger's landlady knew him by sight and knew him as a gentleman, and had given him a small wave as he passed her at the door. He'd hardly noticed as he bypassed the elevator and bounded up the stairs. Anticipation, built up over a week, made his heart beat uncontrollably faster. He knew he was getting too old for this—too old for these feelings, for the foolhardy pursuit of happiness; too old for attraction and daydreams and what his students called, simply, girls. He didn't think of this, though. At the moment there was only one thing on his mind.

When he made it to her white and unremarkable door, he stopped abruptly, panting. He _was_ too old. He tried to straighten his outer robes and the shirt and trousers he wore underneath, and reached up to pat his hair down; he took several deep, calming breaths in an attempt to slow his racing heart. He fought the bubbling feeling from his stomach; whether it was nervousness, or some foreign and unexpected form of happiness, he could not be sure. More intensely, he fought the feeling of embarrassment that threatened to send him back downstairs and back to Hogwarts, where he would behave in a dignified manner and not one suited to bespectacled and bepimpled teenaged boys.

When he was confident that there was no sign of his rapid trek up the sixth floors of her building, he lifted his hand to knock. Anxiously, he waited. He heard everything—the sound of a chair being pushed back from a table and scraping across the floor; the sound of her telling her cat to move out of the way, for goodness' sake. Once more he wiped his shaking, sweaty hand on his trouser legs.

When she finally opened the door, he opened his mouth to say something but was interrupted by her not very enthusiastic "Oh, it's you," and her peremptory buss on the corner of his mouth. She was already halfway across the small hallway before he could say a word. He shut the door behind him and said, "How have you been?", while trying, hard, to remind himself not to be disappointed. Not to expect too much.

She was already seated in her tiny kitchen by the time he had hung up his cloak and followed her inside. He was not surprised to see the breakfast table covered in notes, obsessively stacked and covered in the fluorescent colors of Muggle highlighters, and Hermione herself with wild hair and dark circles under her eyes. Dressed as she was in her university sweatshirt and dark Muggle slacks and sitting in a pool of afternoon light from the window, he found her uniquely pretty. He followed the slope of her forehead and the curve of her cheek, looking for some semblance of welcome in her expression. She was looking at him, politely, but she kept stealing glances at the book that was propped open in front of her. He repeated the question.

"Pretty good," she said, even though she wasn't, not really. She was stressed, like she usually was. She picked up a highlighter, a bright pink one the that reminded him of Nymphadora Tonks' hair. "Exams still aren't over. My consultant healer is jumping down my throat. I've got three written exams and a viva voce one this week, and it's pretty much a dreadful number of exams and course work until the end of the term—as you probably know," she added, and to him the look she shot him seemed accusing.

She hadn't even asked him to sit down. She didn't ask how he was. He became aware, with a sinking heart, that he had once again come at a bad time.

"Oh," he said. "I'm sorry. It seems that you're busy."

- - -

He shut the front door behind him after flatly but politely declining the landlady's solicitous offer of a cup of tea.

Standing on the front steps for a moment, he reached inside his pocket for his watch-chain. He held it for a few moments, remembering. He reminded himself it was still there, and were he to take the watch out to look at it he would see the small inscription, "Now is the time to be happy. Love, H."

He shook the hood of his cloak up and over his eyes, and prepared to walk to the pub on the next street. He walked slowly. The soft rain made a muffling sound over the students' chatter he could hear carried on the wind, and over the sound of automobile horns. He let his thoughts fly, and paused to wonder. If she were to open up one of those cadavers that they studied in the course of becoming a Healer, could she discover what part of the human body it was, somewhere behind the ribs and to the underside of the heart, that could sometimes feel like something was chewing on it? The feeling had been there for months and refused to go away. He wondered if that was normal, if everybody felt like this.

He stopped before crossing the street, and felt the money-bag in his pocket. He had been expecting to take her to dinner. He could have saved the money for another occasion, but something told him that maybe it would be nice to have a drink. He would be nursing one in a few minutes, alone in a booth in her friends' favorite pub, and she would be nursing a cup of coffee some few hundred yards away, alone in her kitchen. Was there some reason that they couldn't nurse their respective drinks together? He wouldn't have minded the silence. He tightened his cloak around him, and shook himself. It was his fault anyway, for not owling her ahead of time that he would be coming.

As he lifted a foot to cross the street, he heard her voice behind him, and the sound of rubber boots slapping across the pavement toward him. He turned around slowly. Don't expect too much, he thought. Maybe you forgot something there. Maybe she wants to send you with a message to the Headmistress. Don't expect too much.

She stopped in front of him, face flushed. She swatted impatiently at the damp hair that had made its way into her eyes. She hadn't even stopped to put on a cloak, just galoshes. There was no letter in her hands, no artifact that he had left behind. Her eyes were upturned and honest.

"_Severus,"_ she said. "I'm sorry. I'm not—I'm not that busy."

"But you are. It's all right. I needed to get some grading done anyway." It was a lie.

"But I'm not. I've read it all, I was just organizing everything. When you—when you came up, I was going to go out anyway, get some dinner." She was lying, too.

"No, you weren't. You made yourself sandwiches. They were on the sideboard," he added hurriedly, seeing the expression on her face. He remembered that she had no umbrella. He conjured one for her; she was getting soaked. He wanted to tell her that it was foolish to go out in the rain with no umbrella when she could so little afford to get ill, but held his tongue. He didn't want to mother her, suffocate her.

"Severus," she said. "Severus, please." He didn't know what to say, and when he didn't answer, she pressed on. "Severus, aren't you angry with me?"

"No," he said quickly, and he wished it were true. "No. I'm sorry. I'm being curt. But you need to go back inside and either start studying again or get some rest. You need all the time you can get. I'll see you soon," he added, even though he knew he wouldn't. Never mind, he thought, that it had been a month since she had spent more than twenty minutes with him, and two weeks since her last owl. Never mind that he had been using all his sick days to see her, and this was the last for the month. Never mind that he had had to teach a class while encased in a Quarantine Bubble just so he wouldn't waste a sick day. Never mind that the same thing had happened, every day, for his past few visits.

He allowed himself to swoop down and press a short, belated kiss to the side of her face, where she was cold and flushed. He could have that at least, to take away with him and think about and dream about when he was alone. All thoughts of the pub abandoned, he prepared to Apparate, and was stopped by the hand on his arm.

"Severus," she said, unhappily.

"Hermione," he countered, beaten.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered. "I've been bloody to you. Some girlfriend. I'm sorry. But aren't you angry? I can tell that you are. Why don't you ever say anything?"

True to form, he remained silent. She repeated the question.

Defeated, he looked at her. "I have no right to expect anything from you," he said quietly.

The grip on his arm tightened. "But you do! You have the right to expect _everything_," she said. "Please, Severus. How can we ever be happy if you never tell me how you feel?"

He paused.

This is how I feel, he thought. I always feel, every day, that you are keeping me here on sufferance. That you're waiting for something better to come along, and that is why things are happening as they are. What I feel for you is love, and to me it's everything. To you it's a weekly owl and an occasional floo. But how can I even ask you for anything more than that?

He looked at the clean lines of her face. He thought of the last time that he had been by, and the last, and the last. She never seemed to have the time. He thought of a future with her constantly rushing off and interrupting meals, maybe even interrupting a marriage proposal. He thought of her being called to emergencies, and thought of all the time that she would be wasting with him. He had never felt so old. It felt like he had already lived what of his life there was, while she was just beginning.

"I'm really fine," he said. "I just wanted to see you for a moment. And make sure you were all right. Now I see that you are." He walked her to the front door of her building, tucked her hair behind her ear, and leaned in to kiss her. His favorite moment was when her eyes fluttered closed, and he could close his eyes too. Every time he kissed her was different. There was always the dizzying feeling that she was near—the unreality that he was really with her. He thought that it would ease that insistent ache, somewhere under his heart, but it didn't; if anything, it grew worse, and spread.

When she opened her eyes, he was gone.

- - -

It was Friday. Most of the time he had an aversion to actually working in the office that had been given to him, but tonight he sat there, amid the preserved specimens and his students' unpromising attempts at potions-making. He did not want to sit in his expansive sitting room, not when it felt too big and too empty, too devoid of life. It was Friday, and he should have agreed to go with Pomona and Filius to the new pub on High Street to celebrate the publication of Filius' most recent research. However, when they asked, he felt that he might not be very good company.

For an hour so, there was peace, of a sort. He had never found the tedious professorial work of grading essays particularly enjoyable, but it was familiar, and easy. He had been doing it for more than two decades. Before she came into his life this was what he did on Friday nights, and there was no reason that things should have been any different. Occasionally glancing up at the clock on his wall, he was satisfied that the minutes were ticking past. He was passing the time. It was not too long before he could reasonably nurse a night-cap and go to bed, and consider Friday night over.

He was not exactly relearning how to be alone. He had never had to unlearn it in the first place.

Though the pile of essays was considerably smaller by the time he stood and stretched his back, he was chagrined to realize that he was genuinely tired. Reminders of his age didn't please him, and he scowled.

It was not a very good expression for Hermione to have caught on his face when she opened his office door without knocking.

He dropped the quill he was holding, and ink the color of blood spattered across his white shirt. He nearly swore, but was aware that Hermione wasn't smiling, and hadn't yet stepped into the room. His stomach felt like it was sinking to the floor. Dread filled him.

"Can I come in?" she said.

He didn't know what made him say it. "I'm afraid it's not a good time" made it past his lips before he knew what he was saying. He expected some kind of grim satisfaction from his words, but all he felt was sad.

She looked like she was expecting it. Looking hurt but resigned, she just nodded.

"I'll just leave this with you, then," she said, walking quickly into the room to place a rolled-up scroll on his desk. She was gone before he could say anything else, and he heard the swift _tap-tap_ of her shoes as she ran down the corridor, away from him.

- - -

He caught up with her when she was close to the front gates. It wasn't raining this time. Some lamps burned in the distance; here, all he had to see her by was the light of his wand, and the moonlight. She had been preparing to Apparate, but had paused, wand in mid-air, at the sound of his voice and the breaking of twigs on the forest floor.

He wondered if she could hear is heartbeat. He stepped closer to her, slowly, afraid she would disappear if he came too close. There were tear streaks on her face, and he wondered if she had been crying too, that last time, and he had been unable to see it because of the rain.

"Do you mean this," he said. To his own ears his throat sounded hoarse, as though he had been screaming, even though he had done no such thing. She nodded.

"Your degree program," he said. "You're putting it at stake."

"No, I'm not."

He tried again. "If you drop these courses and take on an underload now, you won't be in the running for honors."

"I don't care." She was trying to sound nonchalant, he could tell; but her voice wavered.

"Yes, you do!" It was all he could do to stop himself from yelling. Why was she doing this? "This is everything you've ever worked for. Everything that's important to you!"

The look on her face made him stop, mid-speech. She stepped closer this time, and took his hand. "No," she said, sincerely. "No, it's not."

"Do you mean what I think you mean?" he demanded, pleaded. "Are you doing this for me?"

"Yes."

"You don't have to!"

"I do," she said. "I think it would make both of us very happy."

How could he believe her? "You're doing this because of a temper tantrum I threw," he said, trying to be rational. Guilt ate at him. He would get her to see reason. "Please don't. It was not a good day, but it was just one day. We'll see each other soon. This is hardly necessary!"

She burst into tears. Flummoxed, he said nothing. "But I'm sorry! I'm so sorry. I didn't know what else to do. I've worked so hard, and for so long I thought that was the most important thing in the world, but when you disappeared that last time I thought I was going to lose you, and I realized that I was wrong." His ears were ringing with words he could hear but couldn't understand. She was grasping his hand, and the grip started to hurt. "This is the happiest I've ever been. I want to marry you. Nothing can be that important, that I would place it before _this_," she added somberly, indicating the space between them.

He was stunned. When he didn't say a word, she must have taken it a sign that he was conceding. She put her arms around his midsection, effectively staining her clothing with the still-damp red ink on his shirt.

"You'll regret this," he whispered. He tried to stifle the hope that blossomed in his gut and threatened to spread to his fingertips. His hands shook, and he didn't know whether to hold them still, at his sides, or to embrace her as well. "Later. You'll regret it later." _You'll regret me later._

She looked up at him. "I rather think I won't," she said. She smiled, and it was the first smile he'd seen on her face for a very long time; it silenced him. "There are more important things."

They embraced.

- - -

A/N. I haven't read DH, and it is a choice I made willingly. Kindly refrain from spoiling anything in the reviews you will be leaving, if you are leaving any.

The title is from the song "All the Wasted Time" from the musical PARADE (Jason Robert Brown). I highly recommend the song.

This was conceived in the middle of a class like the ones that Hermione is studying for. I'm studying to become a doctor, and most of the people I love are either doctors or working at getting there. The demands on their time are not a joke, and sometimes they (we) don't know why we're even in this profession since it often causes such a rift between them (us) and those they (we) love. This was the product of such a rift. I'm not at all saying, though, that we should all make Hermione's choice; I know I wouldn't. But maybe, after having lost so much (which I assume she must have), she would realize that there are "more important things."


End file.
